Community for SaaS Startups

90.io is a bootstrapped SaaS platform built by veteran entrepreneur Mark Abbott that provides an integrated suite of tools (meeting, planning, goal-setting, feedback, process management) designed to help companies build on the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) framework. With 1,920 paying customers at $140 average monthly revenue and $250K MRR, the company has achieved impressive unit economics ($3M ARR from a bootstrapped model with only 50% net burn between $50-100K monthly) and exceptional retention with 136-140% net revenue retention, primarily driven by organic growth within entrepreneurial communities like EOS coaching networks and organizations like Vistage and YPO.

SafeWo Labs built a passwordless authentication plugin SDK that enables banks, e-commerce platforms, and cryptocurrency exchanges to authenticate users without passwords or one-time codes. Starting from zero in February 2021 with first code written in July 2020, they grew to $130,000 MRR in 12 months through product-led growth and community engagement, primarily via their 12,000-developer Discord and Slack communities. The company raised $1M total across pre-seed and seed rounds and is closing a $9M Series A at a $65M valuation.

BigchainDB, founded by Bruce Poon, is a blockchain database platform designed to handle data-driven enterprise use cases that Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot efficiently support. Currently serving 5-10 customers at $5-10k/month with $50-60k MRR (targeting $100k by year-end), the company has raised $6 million and employs 20 people (mostly PhDs) to solve supply chain tracking, regulatory compliance, and data provenance problems across industries like pharmaceuticals, energy, and automotive.

Ketan Anjaria built HireClub after experiencing multiple startup failures, including a funded startup that shut down despite winning TechCrunch Disrupt awards. He emphasizes community as an underrated foundation for building a business. HireClub has achieved 20% month-over-month growth and reached $30,000 in monthly revenue.

Skiff is a Web3-native, end-to-end encrypted collaboration platform positioned as a privacy-first alternative to Notion. Founded in late 2019 by Andrew Millic (former SpaceX engineer) and Jason (Stanford electrical engineer), the company has achieved tens of thousands of monthly active users through organic community-driven growth in privacy and crypto spaces. With $14.6M raised across seed and Series A rounds, Skiff is targeting 30% month-over-month growth while maintaining a lean 15-20 person engineering team.

Content Snare is a SaaS tool that helps agencies collect content from clients efficiently. James Rose and his business partner validated the idea through a pre-sale landing page, sold 25 spots in 2 hours, and spent 6 months building the MVP with Angular 2 and Ruby on Rails. The business has grown to over $5,000/month MRR through a combination of community building (Facebook group), giveaways, podcasts, and content marketing.

Mike Rubini bootstrapped Engage.net in December 2017 to help e-commerce drop shippers identify trending products by analyzing sales data across thousands of online stores. Starting with just €600/month revenue in January 2018, he grew to 74 paying customers generating €3,000/month MRR by the interview date (~January 2019), while maintaining profitability at ~€300/month profit with only himself full-time and two part-time contractors. He's now transitioning from low-end drop shipper customers (high 15% monthly churn) to mid-market and enterprise e-commerce brands through cold outreach, using tools like Hunter.io and LinkedIn.

Kaya.gs was a modern online Go server built by Gabriel Benmergui and a co-founder in 2011, reaching $2,000/month in revenue through a crowdfunding campaign that raised $20,000. Despite building innovative features and creating an engaged community of 10,000+ registered users with 100 concurrent players, the startup failed after one year due to a combination of product reliability issues, engineering inexperience, and founder morale problems. Gabriel's story illustrates how vision without execution, technical debt, and team friction can derail even a passionate project with real traction.

AirGPU is a bootstrapped cloud gaming service that lets users play the latest games on low-spec devices by streaming from a powerful cloud PC. Founded by Ben Frieza in December 2023, the product gained its first five paying customers ($125 MRR) within five months through targeted outreach in the CloudGamer Reddit community. Currently a side project alongside Frieza's day job, the service is in beta with plans to scale through content marketing and YouTube.

Moz is a Seattle-based SaaS company founded in 2004 as a consulting firm that transitioned to software development in 2008, offering inbound marketing and marketing analytics solutions. The company built an online community of over one million digital marketers and has raised just under $20M in funding, establishing itself as a leader in the marketing software space.

Chief is a subscription-based platform and vetted community for women in corporate leadership roles, co-founded by Carolyn Childers. The company has achieved a billion-dollar valuation and operates as a membership-based business focused on supporting and driving women leaders in corporate environments. They intentionally avoid social media, relying instead on their community-driven model.

Arvid Kahl built and sold FeedbackPanda, a SaaS company. After the exit, he became highly active in the startup community, sharing insights on Twitter, his blog, and Indie Hackers. His approach demonstrates how involuntary reciprocity and audience engagement can drive business growth and community influence.

Spectora is a SaaS platform co-founded by Kevin Wagstaff that achieved a $90M exit. The company gained early traction through Facebook groups and niche SEO strategies, while bootstrapping through consulting work in the early days.

Thibault Louis-Lucas built TweetHunter and Taplio, two successful SaaS products focused on Twitter/social media growth and engagement. He sold Taplio for over $10M and has since focused on community engagement and building in public as core growth strategies.

Discord is a social platform founded by Jason Citron in 2015 that evolved from his earlier failed gaming social platform ventures. Originally designed as a digital gathering space for gamers, it has grown to 150 million monthly active users and now serves as a communication hub for diverse communities beyond gaming. The platform represents Citron's successful pivot after two previous business failures.

Mighty Networks is a community platform founded by Gina Bianchini, former CEO of Ning, to help creators build sophisticated online communities. The product emerged from Bianchini's experience with the limitations of existing community platforms and represents an evolution in how online communities are built and managed in the 2020s.

Martin Hadding, a Microsoft 365 architect with 20 years of experience, built SPRobot as a SaaS solution to solve the content sprawl problem he encountered repeatedly in enterprise consulting. His agency BeSolve (generating $800k revenue in 2022) invested $150,000 into the product, which is currently in beta and targeting SMBs at $150-200/month per tenant. The product is validated through a tight-knit Microsoft 365 community and will launch commercially within 3 months.

Aviyal is building an open source community engagement platform that helps projects with strong user bases monetize through structured support and consulting. Founded by serial entrepreneur Abhishek (who previously sold Weavedin for $10 million), the startup raised $800k in pre-seed funding at a ~$9-10M valuation and has built a 1,000-person waitlist within months of launching in April 2021. With a 28-person team (12 engineers) based in India and a monthly burn of under $40k, they plan to launch paid pricing in April 2022.

Bravado is a community-driven SaaS platform for B2B tech salespeople with over 300,000 members, including 50,000 VPs of Sales/CROs, 150,000 account executives, and 40-50,000 SDRs. Through its Seller Portfolio product (a real-time quota tracking tool similar to Mint.com for sales) and War Room community feature, Bravado provides benchmarking data on sales performance across the industry. In the current market downturn, Bravado is helping sales teams and founders rethink their go-to-market strategies, comp plans, and retention focus.

Easy Ear Training is a business founded by Christopher Sutton who documented the emotional challenges of starting a company in a blog post. Sutton found support and community through the Tropical MBA podcast and its Dynamite Circle community of listeners, which became instrumental in helping him navigate the entrepreneurial journey.